What The Three-Body Problem Taught Me About Life
Starting 2025 with this.
Okay, this may sound a little far-fetched. A little cringe, if you will.
”What The Three-Body Problem Taught Me About Life” was the initial title, but I left out the last two words as every time “life” was mentioned I would feel the “self-help” type of cringe. It's an overused word.
*Edit: I put them back in.*
Okay, it’s just me.
Lately, I started reading The Three-Body Problem trilogy by Liu Cixin. I had watched some movie adaptations and reviews about it but never the books. As a fan of sci-fi and fantasy, it was a great read to end 2024 with.
Finishing the read on The Dark Forest (second book), I couldn’t wait and just binged through the plot summary of the final book on Wikipedia. Worth it.
*Spoiler ahead (?)*
Anyway, the three-body problem was first brought up in the first book of the same name. There is a galaxy about four light years away from our solar system, with three Suns orbiting each other.
In a n-body problem, having three bodies (here, the suns) is chaotic.
With two bodies, given some initial conditions (like, the same mass, stationary, etc.), you can easily predict how they will move in general — there is a general solution (mathematical equation) to a two-body problem.
As of writing, the three-body problem has no general solution (watch a TED-Ed video), which means you can never predict how the three bodies move.
What you can find is the “specific” solution. A bunch of it. It means you can tell how the three bodies move in some cases. It’s just that you can’t generalize it and always be right.
🏠What this taught me
Okay, getting into the cringed part.
As I munched on a sponge cake in the morning of 2025, I realized something.
Isn’t life just like the three-body problem?
In the first book, the protagonist was in a VR(?) simulation game experiencing the Trisolaris (the planet in the galaxy with the three suns). A bunch of players were attempting to solve the three-body problem, each with amazing ideas that my low-dimensional mind could probably never think of.
Though promising at first, everyone failed to wholly predict the movement of the suns. As my low-dimensional mind could understand, the general approach was to collect data and come up with a model — based on those historical data — that is always right in its predictions.
To picture this, we can imagine every solution as a number. Say, in random order and given an initial condition x, the numbers you see are as follows: -
4, 10, 8, 256, 2, 98, 94, 4, 2, …
Chaotic. But, ignoring the order, you can tell every number is an even number. Hence, given an initial condition x, the general solution is (or can be) 2x.
That’s your general model. No matter what x it is, you can always predict what the outcome is. An even number.
Maybe I over-simplified this, but you get what I mean.
In the game, some people tried to identify patterns in historical data and propose general models, but all failed.
Because historical data doesn’t tell us everything. If the system is a bitch, it can surprise you one day with an odd number in your set of historical even numbers.
Then, your general model falls apart.
In the three-body problem, at least in the simulation game, this is what happens.
Except that it is much, much more chaotic.
So that brought me to think, again,
Isn’t life just like the three-body problem?
But much, much more unpredictable, if not similar?
If you wrap up the thing we call “life” as a whole, and try to come up with a general solution to — for lack of better words — “win at life”, can you?
Should you eat the cake?
What to do after graduation?
What is the meaning of life?
…
Is there a general model that always tells you the right answer to every problem in life?
As far as I know, likely no.
In some cases, maybe. I suppose the people who came before us — our ancestors, our parents, and society in general — have tried to solve this “life” problem.
And in their countless attempts, since the beginning of mankind, they came up with some specific solutions (“advice”) to some specific cases in life, based on historical data which my low-dimensional mind calls “experience”.
You shouldn’t eat the high-sugar cake (specific solution) when you have diabetes (specific case).
Well, you enjoy cooking and you went to a culinary school (specific case), try becoming a chef (specific solution).
To serve your god(s). For my cat. For good food. Loved ones. Books. Traveling. Blablabla.
As much as you hear these specific solutions (“advice”), I believe someone also once told you that,
“There is no right or wrong.”
“Everyone is different.”
To me, this is saying,
there is no general solution to the “life” problem.
Just like the three-body problem.
Nice. In a way.
Because, as hard as it sounds to be true, you have the freedom to decide.
Just make sure you can deal with the results.
However chaotic.
Happy New Year!
—Thomas🦙
👋 Hey, you little stranger
I started writing again🎉
After the last story in May 2024, I decided to take a break which somehow took me into 2025. All this time, I kept telling myself to have more drafts ready to publish first before I started posting again.
And that never happened.
I also put off my little #buildinpublic project on LinkedIn for as long. I told myself a similar thing. Be clear about why I am doing that and have a plan before getting into posting again. That never happened, too.
I guess life, in general, doesn’t always turn up the way you predict it to be. Just like the three-body problem. The idea to write this just came up to me eating that sponge cake on the first morning of 2025. I just found myself writing it down, which eventually became a story worth publishing.
Maybe that sponge cake has something in it.
What’s next on Not Alone Club? Well, I haven’t thought about it yet. Just wing it as usual? Probably not. I want to enjoy writing again. With 88 readers now (damn, that’s surreally awesome!) and a recent domain (notalone.club) renewal, I want to write more (and make my money woof worth).
There is no general solution for this.
Let’s try some specific ones.
Thanks for reading, and have a great year ahead!
🏆 Weekly gold
Each week, I share something I found interesting with you. It could be a song, a book, a quote, or a video that blew my mind. Here’s the gold this week 👇
Around an hour into 2025, I was reading How Was Your Day by Boey, the author of the When I Was a Kid series. I ended up finishing it in one sitting and went to bed around 3 a.m.
Calling it beautiful doesn’t do it justice enough. In Boey’s own words,
Ive never worked in an office. Not the types i see when i go to a government building, or when i get a chance to visit work places (I was lucky- i found work in animation making video games overseas and it was a lot of fun). During the pandemic I got to know a girl from malaysia who was nervous about starting her job back home, and i was secretly writing about her first week at work to present to her as a gift, kinda like a “you made it thru week one” thing. But a week turned into two, two into a month, and soon i found myself wrapped up in her world. Unfolded over a series of text, this is about navigating a terrible job, managing family expectations, money, seeking love, feeling lost, and wanting a better life elsewhere. It was way more than i was prepared to write.
Best book to start 2025 with.
🎁 Credits
Liu Cixin — for writing The Three-Body Problem trilogy.
TED-Ed — for Newton’s three-body problem explained.
Llia Yu — for the cover image.
Boey — for writing How Was Your Day.
Friend — for the sponge cake.